Overview
- Operation Olympos says its current team of 111 investigators must grow to about 210 and that it needs up to £19.3 million for 2026/27 to meet its timeline for submitting charging files to the Crown Prosecution Service.
- The Home Office has provided £3.2 million since 2023 and a special grant of £2.8 million for 2026/27, but police say that level of support leaves a large funding gap that risks pushing the investigation back by as much as five years.
- Investigators are processing roughly eight million documents and have interviewed 13 of 53 people of interest so far, and they stress that careful forensic review is needed to meet the high legal threshold for criminal charges.
- Campaigners and victims’ representatives have criticised the shortfall, warning delays would be unacceptable for ageing victims who suffered wrongful prosecutions, imprisonment, financial ruin and other harms.
- The probe builds on earlier actions including a 2021 Met investigation into Fujitsu staff evidence and sits alongside a wider public inquiry and large taxpayer costs for compensation and legal work tied to faults in the Horizon accounting system.